The Vikings

The Vikings by Professor Kenneth W. Harl               Audio Book: 18 hours (Great Courses)     250 pages            

Excellent lectures on a subject I have always been intrigued by.    Professor Harl is a charismatic speaker.   You can tell he truly loves the subject he is teaching because he talks about the places in such depth you can picture the landscape and feel the cold wind and icy waters.  If you are a Game of Thrones fan like I am visualize Jon Snow at the Wall how all encompassing that is when you see it.   I always have to put on a sweatshirt or blanket to watch those scenes they are so vivid you get the sensation of cold on your skin just viewing it.   Those green screens are amazing!   It is like that with Professor Harl’s lectures.   A fun and informative teacher.    He speaks with such joy that when he talks about the historical figures it is as if he is telling you facts about dear friends of his.   Almost like he is telling tales out of school at times, as when he refers to some of the early Norse queens being bratty or when he imparts little known quirky facts about some of the Kings and warriors, and oh yes, there is that nymphomaniac you will learn about, she caused a real stir back in the day!   He brings the times to life describing their struggles, travels and migrations and the effects they had on their surroundings and the cultural contributions that can be seen even to this day.    I learned so much I hadn’t learned previously.   I knew that the Vikings explored, o.k. rummaged and pillaged, a lot of the other countries they could get to by water, but, it had never occurred to me that many of the lands, some of the Vikings actually decided to stay in and set up homes there.   Or many went back home and like the Beverly Hillbillies, loaded up the boat and moved to Saxony!   I always thought they got in their ships, went wherever, made war with whoever lived where they got out and then loaded up the booty they won then went back home till the next time they needed supplies then back out in the water pillage somemore get a lot of booty to trade or supplies for their own homes and that was sort of the cycle I saw, however, my eyes were opened and I was enlightened to  just how often new colonies were formed in Scotland, England – there was even a Danish King of England!  King Canute, who as King of Denmark, was able to conquer England (and Norway) sitting on the throne as one of the best Kings to rule that country.   His praises are sang in verse and song as far away as Iceland which when the Vikings reached Iceland, the King convinced a number of his people in Denmark to move there to set up a new colony.    Most of the written history, ancestry, poetry, stories, legends, songs and information on the deities they worshipped, Odin, Thor, Loki, etc. have been handed down in written form from the colonists who settled in Iceland.    In all of the countries, the Vikings settled in there are place names and descendents of the mighty Vikings there to this day.   I also learned about the Berserkers which were kind of like Hitler’s Wehrmacht, getting hyped up on some kind of Viking joy juice before going out to take down another society.   It helped to pump them up and get them in a riled up mood beating their clubs against their chests and helmets – picture football fans before a game – I had heard the term Berserkers (from which we get the word berserk) but I didn’t really know the gist of what was up with them.    Some kind of stimulation along with a night of the raid leader playing coach before the big game and Professor Harl shares the excitement of the moment so well you can feel yourself sitting at a rough hewn oak table pounding, your two-headed axe (yeah, they invented that, too) handle on the floor as you stamp your feet and scream a growl out, “Ja, lad os fa dem!”  (Yeah, let’s get them! – Old Norse/Danish.   Excellent!  If you like history, archaeology, cultural anthropology, Vikings, etc. You will love this for everyone else – you will get a kick out of the telling of a lot of history in an incredibly interesting way.   Professor Harl breaks the difficult down into conversational, easy to understand and relate to lectures that cover Viking life and lore if not from a-z certainly close.   Bravo!   Well done.